


The Gemini

by SparkyIsSpiders



Category: Original Work
Genre: (Very) minor romance, Dragons, F/F, Gen, Magic, Superpowers, Technically MCD?, The dude isn't technically a main character, but they do die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23122126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparkyIsSpiders/pseuds/SparkyIsSpiders
Summary: Kenta and Rhen have been best friends since childhood. When Rhen vanishes one day, Kenta leaves her home in the snowy North to track down her friend, only to run into her in the last place she expected to find her.Rhen is cursed. A strange power is compelling her to hunt and kill a dragon. She's never met this dragon, never seen them, in fact she doesn't even know their name. She's spent the last five years on the run, avoiding her mystery target, but never managing to get too far...Kala wants nothing more than to hunt down the Severer. If she can just kill this one dragon, her brother will be free. No more running across the continent, no more sleeping out in the open. Eno could finally be free to pursue his dreams. If only they could actually catch up to her.Ki'Aziz runs a bar in a small desert town. It's boring, sure, but it puts food on the table. She's prepared to live out the rest of her life in relative peace and extreme mundanity, until she realizes that roughly half of her thoughts were never actually hers in the first place.Three ancient and powerful forces walk the planet. None know their true potential, and all three are on a collision course.
Relationships: OFC/OFC





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So this is gonna update whenever I finish a chapter. I only work on this at school (home has too many distractions) so how fast I can pump out chapters depends on how much work I get. I really, REALLY wanna finish this one, but my track record for finishing stories is... not good, to put it mildly. I do have a bit of a backlog, so there are a few guaranteed updates coming your way.
> 
> Also, if you're here for romance, well...  
> It'll be there, but it is going to be extremely light. I'm not really comfortable writing romance, and its mostly here to make some character actions a bit more believable. This one is mostly adventure.

Kenta was starting to get extremely worried. Rhen had always had a short temper and a penchant for violence, but this level of aggression was… new. Kenta was pretty sure that she had patched her friend up from the aftermath of a fight more times in the last few weeks than she had at any other point in their entire lives. Currently, they were hiding behind a tall pine tree about a mile from the village. The snow that blanketed the ground was covered in talon prints and colored red in several spots where Rhen had bled on it, “Hold still, moron.” Kenta snapped.

Rhen huffed and fidgeted even more because apparently the process of getting stitches needed to be even more painful and difficult than it was already. Rhen twitched her arm, then hissed when the needle stabbed the wrong spot, because, surprise! When you’re in the very delicate process of getting stitches and you move the injured part of yourself, the needle ends up stabbing you!

“Rhen, if you could sit still for more than _one second_ , that would be great.”

“If you stopped stabbing me with small pointy objects, I could,” Rhen grumbled.

Kenta lashed her tail, stirring up snow violently. “I’m sorry. Next time, I’ll let you bleed out and risk infection instead. I’m sure the festering wound won’t hurt as much as one needle.” _Of course, this wouldn’t be necessary if you could keep your claws to yourself._ But Kenta didn’t say that because Rhen hadn’t listened to it when she had gotten that black eye at age five, or when she had gotten the scar across her side when the dragon she had started pummeling slashed it open, or when she had broken her wing, or last week when she had broken her tail tip, or the day previous when she got a bite directly to the face. Sometimes, Kenta wondered if the only words and phrases that Rhen could understand were challenges to fights.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine, Ken. Just because something could get infected doesn’t mean it will. You don’t have to be so paranoid over it. **OW.** ” Rhen yelped as Kenta stuck her with the needle again.

“I’m pretty sure you just jinxed yourself. And anyway, I’m not paranoid, just worried. Speaking of, what’s gotten into you lately? Even for you, Rhen, this is ridiculous.”

Rhen huffed. Again. “He looked at me funny. And what do you mean ‘even for me’?”

“Rhen, I’m pretty sure he was reading the sign behind you. And you know exactly what I mean. I’ve never seen you get into this many fights. It used to be four or five a month, which was bad enough, but now it happens every day. So I’ll ask again; what in the name of the Aurora is up with you?”

“Kenta… I can’t-” she sighed. “Can we not… do this? Right now? Because I just-I can’t.” Rhen looked... awkward? Afraid? Kenta couldn't tell. That was new. Rhen had no concept of shame, and was either too brave or too stupid (probably both) to be scared of anything. Kenta wanted to push, but decided against it. Whatever it was, they could talk about it later. It wasn't like either of them were going anywhere.

“Fine.” Kenta finished up the last stitch and threw a wing around Rhen’s shoulders, ignoring the little jolt it sent her. Rhen was a friend, and anything else was a bad idea. “Alright, that should be it. Just stay safe, okay?” Rhen nodded. “C’mon, Rhen, let’s get you something to eat.”

* * *

In the weeks that followed, Rhen’s moods got worse and worse and worse. She was distant and twitchy and cagey, startling every time anybody made any sudden moves. And then, one day, she vanished entirely.


	2. Chapter 1

_Five years later_

Ki’Aziz tensed up, her dark brown wings folding defensively against her back. Her dank, moldy bar often drew in the worst sort of dragons, but the stranger who had just walked through the door was something else. She was big, all sharp edges and coiled anger. Her dark gray scales looked scuffed and dusty, and the instant she spotted Aziz, she stalked over.  **_Oh, look. Another violent little monster. Does she think you overcharged her? Is she just itching to fight the first dragon she sees?_ ** _ Why can’t she pick on somebody else? _ Aziz shook her head to clear the thoughts away. Now was not the time to get angry. Now was the time to play it safe and be nice. Ki’Aziz slapped on her most charming, harmless smile, and asked: “Can I help you?” The stranger sniffed.

She slapped a poster down on the table. The dragoness drawn on it was rusty red with dark, sky-blue eyes and a furious expression. There were claw marks across her snout, a scar on the underside of her jaw that looked like it had come from a bite, and about a thousand more little cuts and scratches all over her body. So the stranger was looking for somebody. _A fugitive, probably. Being hunted down by this dungpile._ ** _Because this world is full of scum like-_** No. She was not doing this right now. Angry thoughts happened at home, where she was less likely to annoy any violent drunkards. Or bounty hunters, because apparently, she got those now. Awesome.

Aziz opened her mouth, ready to tell the angry gray dragon to go eat her tail, when she looked back at the poster again. It was… familiar. Because a dragon had started wandering in a few weeks ago looking like their face had gotten in the way of somebody else’s teeth (and then they had immediately tried to pick about twelve different fights). The picture was missing a few scars, and the eyes were the wrong color, but otherwise… yeah. This was definitely the face of her newest regular.

“I think I might have seen this dragon around.”  _ I should tell her that I’m not sure but that some gold might jog my memory.  _ **_Anybody else would. Having a roof over your head and food on your table is a privilege, of course._ ** She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.  _ Now is NOT THE TIME _ . “Some of the scars are missing. And you got the eyes completely wrong. But yeah, I know that one.”

The stranger glared, leaning across the very stained bartop. “Then you haven’t seen this dragon around, because there is no way that I got her eyes wrong. They look like this. EXACTLY like this. And before you lie, I know for a fact that other dragons have seen her around town. So tell. Me. The. Truth.” She punctuated her sentence by stabbing the parchment repeatedly and violently. Her accent was as harsh as the dragoness it was attached to, but with a slight musical quality woven into it. So she was from the north. Iskantsenian, maybe? Auralian? _Was Auralia a religion or a country?_ Aziz couldn’t remember. The probably-a-bounty-hunter dug her claws into the wooden counter. Aziz really hoped that she got a splinter. It was certainly in bad enough shape for that, and anybody who thought that it was okay to threaten somebody like this deserved it.

_Wow. Touchy. I REALLY hope she gets that splinter._ Aziz shrugged, keeping her spines, wings, and face as relaxed as possible. This stranger didn’t need to know that Aziz was about ten seconds away from either kicking her out or fleeing the premises. “Then I haven’t seen her, I suppose. The dragon I saw had one silver eye and one red one.” Which was really weird, but whatever. “But they looked awfully similar to this one. Does your friend have any siblings with heterochromia?” Aziz tried her best to keep up a calm, kind smile as she spoke, but she was pretty sure she was grimacing at this point.

“Liar! Where is she? I’ve asked around. I know she comes to this bar often. So tell me the truth before I get violent.” the stranger was snarling, spitting all over the bartop and Aziz’s face.

“I don’t know where she lives, I don’t spend my time stalking my patrons, believe it or not. You could just hang around, you know.” _Please don’t_. Aziz bit her tongue as she tried desperately to prevent that thought from leaving her mouth. “She comes here every day at sunset and stays for hours.” She wasn’t even going to touch that liar comment. Either this stranger wanted to believe her or she didn’t. Aziz had seen dragons like that before, and the only thing that could ever budge them was the truth. **_Sometimes, they even ignore that._**

“If you’re messing with me…”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Aziz said, and then she scurried away to start cleaning the counter. The uncleanable nightmare counter that had resisted every cleaning product under the sun. It beat doing nothing, at least, and it was an excuse not to look in the general direction of the dragoness currently glowering behind her.

As the day wore on, dragons swept in and out of the bar. The dragon working the fan was doing a poor job of it that day, and the relentless desert heat was making Aziz’s mood ten times worse. At one point, she had asked the probably-a-bounty hunter if she wanted anything to eat or drink, considering where she was,  _ hint hint _ . The response she received was an angry huff and a fearsome glower, and Aziz decided not to push the issue any further. She ignored her twitching spines, her angry thoughts, and did her fire-scorched job.

Finally, the shadows got longer, the bar got more crowded, and a rust-colored dragoness stepped through the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm probably gonna post some world info sometime soon/eventually (complete with a map). So, uh, stay tuned for that, I guess.


	3. Chapter 2

The Kanzashi desert was the last place Rhen had ever wanted to visit. She was a Northern Dragon, for the Aurora’s sake! Rhen wanted freezing winter winds and snow on the ground and fish freshly caught from an ice-cold lake. She did not want heat bad enough to cook hatchlings in their eggs, sand that got between her scales and also her claws and also her _teeth_ (somehow). Also, she didn’t care what anyone in this ice-blasted town said; lizards were disgusting, gross, bony abominations that didn’t belong anywhere in anybody’s digestive tract. The seedy bar located in an equally seedy, squat, sandstone building was the best place in the entire desert; which was a little bit like saying “This rock is the tastiest part of the turd!”

The bar was grimy, with stone floors, stone tables, and stone shelves. The only part that wasn’t made out of rocks was the bar itself, which was ten percent wood, ninety percent disgusting stains created by unknown substances. Yet somehow it attracted every single dragon the whole entire town (all five of them, it seemed). Rhen blamed the fact that deserts were boring and terrible and bars were at least slightly entertaining no matter where they were. Besides, Ki'Aziz was friendly and welcoming to everybody that wasn’t Rhen. Rhen didn’t know if it was The Curse getting to Ki'Aziz, or if she didn’t like Rhen because Rhen had almost caused a fight (or seven) the very first night that she had entered Ki'Aziz's establishment.

A painful tug in her chest attempted to remind her _hey, you shouldn't be here. The dragon you need to kill is_ that _way_. Rhen ignored it. As much as she desperately wanted to sink her claws into them (whoever they were) she also knew that murder was bad, especially without good justifications like "it was self-defense" or "they stole my sweet roll". And anyway, it wasn't that she _wanted_ to kill them, just that she wanted to _kill_ them. There was a huge difference. Totally.

Rhen was not drunk enough to be pondering this right now. She loped over to her stool, situated in a corner between the bar and the grimy, stain-covered wall. Everything in this stupid place was made of stains. She didn't bother to let Ki'Aziz know she was there, the dragoness probably already knew and would almost certainly make her wait. Again: Ki’Aziz was nice to everybody who wasn't Rhen.

Rhen sighed and settled in for another long, boring night of self-pity and maybe self-hatred if she got drunk enough. But then-

"Rhen?" The voice sounded shocked, and confused, and so, so familiar.

But it couldn't be. Kenta lived half a continent away. She lived in freezing, snowy north. She was Iskantsenian, born and raised, and she surely still lived there. There was no way...

"Rhen! Where the hell have you been?" That was definitely Kenta. Right here in this stupid bar, talking to Rhen in rapid Iskantsenis. By the Aurora, the stupid moron was  _ here _ . Was she looking for Rhen? Because that was, well... that was something she wanted more than anything else, and yet the idea had her spines spiking up in alarm and dread. She spread a dark gray wing to cover up her face and sprang to her feet, ready to leave.

"Oh no you don't, seal-brain." And then there were firm talons on her shoulders, pushing her back into her seat, and someone was tugging the wing that was hiding her face. "Rhen,  _ please _ ."

She closed her eyes and lowered her wing ever so slowly. She wondered what expression Kenta was wearing. Was her brow furrowed in concern? Were her teeth bared in fury? Or, worst of all, did her eyes shine with pity? Rhen wanted to look, but she didn't dare. She could excuse the vanishing act, scrabble around for a good reason to be in a bar in a desert so far from and so unlike their home. But there was no way to lie about her eyes. Those didn't just randomly change color. They especially didn’t turn into weird colors, like silver and red. All she had to do was convince Kenta that everything was fine, that she didn't need to be followed or looked after or worried about, that Rhen was fine on her own and not doing something unforgivable. Maybe she could explain that she was on a journey of self-discovery! Yes, she wanted to find herself, see the world, all that stupid sappy stuff. Her journey was definitely not about possibly murdering a random probably-innocent stranger.

Rhen heard a murmured "Well, she was right about the scars..." and then huge, muddy brown wings were wrapping around her and holding her tight. She didn't even need to open her eyes to see what color they were, she knew exactly what Kenta looked like. She opened her eyes anyway because there was no way that Kenta could see their weird freakiness from here. But then she felt that tug in her chest again, shouting  _ go WEST, stupid. Why are you sitting around like a moron? Go kill the dragon you need to kill _ and she yanked herself back and shut her eyes tight because she was probably destined to be a killer and definitely terrible enough to let it happen and Kenta didn't deserve that.

"Rhen, what's going on?" Kenta's voice was calm in a way that told Rhen she was barely holding it together. It reminded her of the time when they were hatchlings, and Rhen almost got killed by a polar bear. Bleeding out in the snow as Kenta said "It'll be okay" over and over as if that would make it true.

"I just... I had to..." Rhen couldn't get the words out, her breathing was so ragged, there was so much going on in her head. That tug was starting to get insistent and painful, and she was getting too overwhelmed to push it down.

"Look at me. Rhen. Rhen! Look. At. Me." And Rhen didn't want to. She really, really didn't want to. The idea made her feel like somebody was rubbing her scales the wrong way, but Kenta sounded so worried, and Rhen had really, really missed her, and she needed somebody to know what was going on. She sighed and plunked her head down on the table.

Rhen took a deep breath and opened her eyes; one iris the color of blood, the other, a shining silver. "There. Happy?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm running outta backlogged chapters and I haven't done much work on this thing. Also, I started a WoF fic because I am prone to bad decisions like trying to write two stories at once. Send help.


	4. Chapter 3

This wasn't Rhen. The dragoness in front of her was absolutely Rhen. There was no way that this was Rhen. The imposter had just done the most Rhen thing on the planet. Reluctant agreement with a passive-aggressive jibe? Yeah, that was her friend alright. But the Rhen sitting in front of her had eyes that were all wrong. They weren't just not Rhen's eyes, they weren't dragon eyes. the colors were wrong, and staring into them gave Kenta this pervading sense of wrongness. There was something in them, a strange energy swirling around the pupils that made her spines rise up with dread. Rhen had deep blue eyes, the color of the arctic sea on a sunny day, with little sparks of light, like tiny stars or chips of ice. This-this stranger-no, this _imposter_ had one eye the color of blood and rust and decay, and another the color of the moon.

The dragon in front of her carried herself like Rhen, talked like Rhen, had the same scales and even some of the same scars as Rhen. But this couldn't be Rhen. It just couldn't. "What _are_ you?" She demanded, a little louder than necessary. Just then, Ki'Aziz slithered over to where they were sitting.

"Keep your voice down, or I'll kick you out."

Kenta, suddenly remembering where she was, looked around. They were getting some weird looks from the nearby dragons. Kenta supposed that it wasn't every day somebody waltzed in and started shouting at another dragon in quick, angry Iskantsenis. She looked back at Rhen(?) and lowered her voice. "What happened?"

Rhen(?) sighed. "You don't wanna know."

Kenta narrowed her eyes into slits. "If I didn't want to know, I wouldn't have asked. Tell me." Kenta demanded.

Rhen(?) looked like somebody facing the wrong end of several spears. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know what happened to my eyes. I don't know why I'm doing... what I'm doing. Just that I have to. Don't follow me, don't try to help me, and please, don't ask any more questions." Wow. Rhen had said please. Normally, she was allergic to that word. Rhen threatened and fought and then ignored anybody who told her no. But she didn't beg. Kenta had never, ever seen her beg. Maybe this really wasn't Rhen. But of course that was Rhen. Who else could it be? And dodging a hard question? Giving as few details as possible? That was the Rhen she knew and lov- cared about.

Of course, when all Rhen wanted to do was avoid questions, all Kenta wanted to do was find answers. "Rhen. You've been missing for five. Years. I've been on the road, looking for you for every single one of those years. Now, I've finally found you, and apparently, all you do is hang out in a bar in a terrible desert in the middle of nowhere. You've also clearly gotten into even more fights, your eyes are... different. You're very obviously distressed, and I would really, really like to know what happened to you. You don't want me to help you? Prove to me that you don't need help."

The dragoness in front of her sighed. “Fine. I’m cursed.”

Kenta waited for her to continue, but Rhen clearly had other plans, all of which involved staring morosely at the wall as if it had started clubbing baby seals for fun. “Very illuminating, Rhen.” There was another pause. An opportunity for Rhen to answer any of the ten thousand questions she had just raised. She didn’t take it.

“Nothing, Rhen? You tell me you’re cursed, even though curses aren’t real and both of us know it, then you say nothing as if you think that ‘I’m cursed’ is an explanation instead of just… confusing and annoying and very very frustrating.”

Rhen made a noise that was similar to the sounds made by a very distressed cat running its claws across a chalkboard. It was a very unique sound, in that it was both horribly aggravating and that it should have been impossible for a dragon to make. Kenta resisted the urge to violently introduce the counter below her to her face. She hissed quietly, counted to ten, and tried again. “Please, talk to me. You vanished into thin air. For five years I’ve been looking for you, wondering if you were even alive. And here you are, in a bar, in a desert. I will leave you alone forever if you want me to, but first I need to know what happened. You-” Kenta huffed out a breath. “You’re my friend, Rhen. Of course, I’m worried about you.”

Rhen refused to meet her gaze. “I’m not gonna go into details. But… I can tell you this. I’m… looking for someone.”  
“Who?” Kenta searched through her memories, but the number of dragons she knew of that 1: Rhen would go looking for and 2: could be found by sulking in grimy bars was a big, fat zero.

“I don’t know.” Okay, so maybe Rhen was- yeah, no. Kenta had nothing. Not an ice-blasted thing.

“How does that even work?” Kenta shouted before she caught Ki’Aziz glaring at her, and scowled right back. Right. (Semi) crowded bar. Acceptable speaking volume. Got it.

Rhen sighed for the fiftieth time that evening. “I don’t know. But I know how to find them. An-and I have to find them. And when I do I have to-” Rhen made another mangled noise, wearing an expression that told Kenta that Rhen was about two seconds away from trying to knock down the wall using only her skull and her strong determination to not be having this conversation. Considering her friend’s bone-headedness and brute strength, she might even succeed.

Okay, time to switch tactics. She waved Ki’Aziz over. “Rhen, you want a drink?” Rhen sighed and nodded. Before Kenta could place an order, Rhen said “The usual.”

Kenta noted that it took longer than it should have to receive their drinks. And that their drinks were slightly less full than the drinks ordered by other dragons. Also, Ki’Aziz placed them on the table with more force than strictly necessary. A lot more force. So Ki’Aziz probably hated them both. Great.

When Kenta mentioned this to her friend, Rhen snorted and said, “Pretty sure she just hates me.”

“Well… I did kind of maybe threaten her slightly when I asked her about you.”

“You did. It was very rude.” Ki’Aziz said, apparently less out of earshot than Kenta had thought.

"And I'm the violent one?" Rhen asked at the same time, incredulous.

Kenta shook her head, ignoring the ornery bartender and her even grumpier friend. “I could come with you. If you wanted.”

Rhen’s spines shot up in alarm. “That-no. Nope. Bad idea. Nope.”

“Rhen, you say that you’re looking for somebody, but it doesn’t look like you’ve made any progress. You’ve been hanging around in this town for months, and nobody knows anything about you other than your habit of hanging around this bar and trying to start fights. Whoever it is you’re looking for isn’t here. I can help you find them, Rhen.”

Her friend just shook her head. “I know how to find them, I just don’t want to.”

“But you said-”

“I left because I had to find them. There was this pull… like… magnets? Or something. But painful. But then I figured out why I had to find them, and I just… I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. So I turned tail and ran as far from them as I could get without, without- nevermind. and I ended up here. But I know where they are, and I know that they’re getting closer, and something tells me that they’re looking for me too.”

Kenta tried to wrap her mind around this, failed, tried again, failed again, and decided to try and clear some things up instead. “Why did you have to find them, Rhen?”

Rhen shook her head and averted her gaze. She drew a shaking talon up to her dark silver underscales and traced it ever so slowly across her neck.

“You have to _kill_ them?”

Rhen nodded. “But I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t!”

“I have to.”

“I'm pretty sure you don't.”

“It’s not up to me, Kenta. You saw what happened to my eyes. I saw it too when I started feeling the pull. I need to find them. I don’t know why. I think it’s… something else. I think there’s something else in my… in my head. Because I think about this dragon I’ve never met, I think about them, and there’s suddenly so much anger. But it doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. Like… like some ancient grudge. And it wants me to kill them, and I just… I can’t.” She dropped her head to the table, clearly exhausted and probably halfway to being drunk.

“Go home, Kenta.” Rhen’s voice was much quieter now. She sounded so tired, and there was a deep sadness interwoven with her voice. “Go home and… I dunno. Live your life. You don’t deserve to be wrapped up in this. It’s not your fight.”

“It doesn’t sound like yours, either.”

“Kenta...”

“Listen, Rhen, it sounds to me like all you wanna do is sit in this bar and mope. That isn’t exactly a deadly life. I spent five years looking for you, okay? Five years. And I think we both know that there isn’t much waiting for me back in Iskantsen. If I did have a life waiting for me back there that could be even close to worthwhile, I left it behind when I went to find you.” Rhen stared at the floor, looking like someone had eaten her puppy and then framed her for it. “And that isn’t your fault! I… I guess I can understand why you had to leave? And anyway, you didn’t tell me to go looking for you. I decided to do that on my own. Because you’re my friend, and I care about you, and I missed you so much, and I lo- just… I want you around, okay? And if you’re going to spend all your time sulking in a bar and trying to avoid whatever the hell it is that’s going on, then I might as well join you anyway.”

Rhen looked at her warily, and then glanced around the bar, looking for, well… who knew? Finally, she nodded. “Okay...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the world notes are coming along... very slowly.  
> Also, I have started a WoF fanfic, because two projects just isn't enough. I'll post it eventually.


End file.
